In a current examine revealed within the journal Communications Drugs, researchers in the US of America (US) used giant language fashions (LLMs) to investigate over 391,000 distinctive discussions on Reddit, a social media platform, associated to glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists (GLP-1 RAs). The examine revealed excessive curiosity in GLP-1 RAs, with discussions specializing in weight reduction experiences, unwanted side effects, entry points, and constructive psychological advantages, with largely neutral-to-positive sentiment.
Examine: Utilizing giant language fashions to evaluate public perceptions round glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists on social media. Picture Credit score: Caroline Ruda/ Shutterstock
Background
Greater than 38% of the world’s inhabitants is obese or overweight, projected to succeed in 51% by 2035. Weight problems is thought to extend the chance of cardiometabolic ailments and all-cause mortality considerably. GLP-1 RAs are medication that imitate the operate of pure GLP-1, a hormone within the gut that controls glucose metabolism and emotions of fullness. Whereas this class of medication was initially accepted for kind 2 diabetes, it has lately gained world consideration for cardiovascular threat discount and weight reduction in sufferers with weight problems, regardless of the presence of diabetes. Nevertheless, public views on GLP-1 RAs, essential for therapy uptake and adherence, haven’t been totally explored.
Social media platforms like Reddit supply anonymized public conversations on well being matters, revealing real-world experiences usually missed in scientific settings or trials. Whereas manually analyzing giant volumes of this information is resource-intensive, its evaluation may be expedited utilizing synthetic intelligence programs similar to LLMs. Subsequently, researchers within the current examine employed LLMs to investigate over 390,000 Reddit discussions on GLP-1 RAs, figuring out matters similar to weight reduction, unwanted side effects, and issues. They aimed to watch unwanted side effects, gauge public sentiment, and information future analysis and public well being initiatives utilizing the findings.
Concerning the examine
Reddit hosts person discussions within the type of posts and feedback. It’s organized into publicly accessible, topic-specific communities known as “subreddits.” GLP-1 RA-related discussions had been curated by indexing Reddit content material based mostly on the generic and model names of GLP-1 RA medication, together with semaglutide. The dataset included 391,461 distinctive discussions (largely since 2021) from 116,216 authors, with 71,982 posts and 319,479 feedback.
A beforehand described “subject modeling” strategy was employed for evaluation, and varied instruments and algorithms had been employed. Discussions are reworked into numerical representations and clustered to determine matters. Every subject was labeled and grouped based mostly on similarities in dialogue content material. This strategy aimed to extract key themes and insights from the in depth discussions on GLP-1 RAs obtainable on Reddit. Moreover, this examine employed a mannequin named “RoBERTa” (quick for Robustly Optimized Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers Pre-training Method) to categorise sentiment. It used three chances (starting from 0 to 1) to find out the character of the sentiment inside the textual content, labeled as “unfavourable, impartial, or constructive sentiment.”
Outcomes and dialogue
About 97.1% of the discussions targeted on GLP-1 RA medicines prescribed for weight reduction, similar to semaglutide, tirzepatide, and liraglutide, with “Ozempic” being essentially the most mentioned (41.4%), regardless of not being accepted by the US Meals and Drug Administration (FDA) for weight reduction. Solely 2.9% of discussions had been about GLP-1 RAs accepted solely for diabetes. The quantity of discussions surged considerably after 2022, following the FDA approval of “Wegovy.”
The mannequin recognized 168 dialogue matters, indicating excessive public curiosity, with a concentrate on experiences with the medication for weight reduction. The matters included drug efficacy, comparability to different therapies, urge for food affect, and unwanted side effects. Nausea was discovered to be essentially the most frequent aspect impact, adopted by vomiting, injection web site points, constipation, pancreatitis, and gastroparesis. Additional, entry points, market shortages, insurance coverage protection, and the ethics of off-label use had been discovered to be mentioned. Optimistic results on motivation and psychological well being and the worth of avoiding bariatric surgical procedure had been additionally mentioned. Subjects had been clustered into 33 teams, reflecting themes similar to comparisons with different therapies, unwanted side effects, entry issues, and psychological advantages. Sentiment evaluation revealed that 31.8% of discussions had been unfavourable, 50.1% had been impartial, and 17.4% had been constructive. Notably, two matters had been excluded on account of unlawful content material associated to buying illicit substances.
Scatter plot displaying a 2D-projection of all dialogue embeddings, the place every level represents a dialogue. The overlying coloration represents the related group of that dialogue based mostly on the subject modeling. The x- and y-axes symbolize the 2 axes (Function 1, Function 2) onto which embeddings had been dimensionally diminished utilizing Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection for visualization functions.
The examine is strengthened by its large-scale AI-based evaluation of social media discussions to uncover public perceptions and experiences with medication, providing insights past conventional scientific analysis. Nevertheless, the examine is restricted by potential mislabeling on account of spelling errors, incapacity to confirm reported unwanted side effects, restricted generalizability, and suboptimal normal activity benchmarks for LLM.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the examine analyzed large-scale GLP-1 RA-related discussions on social media utilizing LLMs. The findings reveal discussions centered on weight reduction experiences, aspect impact comparisons, entry points, and constructive psychological advantages. This means excessive public curiosity in GLP-1 RAs and highlights priorities for scientific and coverage communities, together with monitoring unwanted side effects, addressing entry boundaries, and acknowledging each the bodily and psychological advantages of those medication.
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